Passover is a time when Jews gather together at a seder and read from the Haggada the narrative of our journey with the instruction that we should feel as if we personally were freed from Egypt.
This ritual serves to integrate our past to our present and one generation to another. In my day job as a psychologist, while I was preparing for this week’s consultation on EMDR (a trauma therapy), I discovered a chapter entitled “Narrative” in Dan Siegel’s Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology that opened my eyes that the seder is an ideal ritual to heal trauma and further integrate a group.
Siegel was writing about trauma in general, not our enslavement in Egypt nor Yom haShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), but the connections are clear. By narrating our story and subjecting it to further interpretation, we change the nature of our memories on a neurochemical level from bits of sensory data to a fuller, more integrated story. In order to do this according to Siegel, we need an observing self rather than just rotely offering information. By not only recalling but subjecting the events year after year to discussion, analysis, personal viewpoints, the story is constantly recontextualized and reintegrated. Describing the narrative process, he says
“this… can be a healing form of resolution of trauma, a way of making coherent what was, at that time, a disturbingly painful reality. In this way, an ongoing narrative process brings the individual fully into the present even with the same past events. This is how finding meaning now, especially with a history of meaningless/ purposeless/destructive experiences from the past can be profoundly liberating in the present. We can move from being a passive recipient of painful events to becoming empowered authors of our own life stories.” (31-4)
On every level we see this embedded into our traditions. We are meant to engage in interpreting text, discussing our history and re-experiencing key events through holidays. Siegel would say this moves us toward integration in our lives in terms of our neurobiology, our connections to the past, and our relationships. Thanks to the creativity of my sister, Meryll, I find that each year, the theme of slavery and freedom has new meaning for me. The seder is a time when our connection as a family feels stronger and my connection with my own history is reawakened and re-experienced. This year, it will be very different as Harry and I will be setting off for a journey to Eastern Europe and will see evidence of destruction and renewal. It seems fitting that Alisa, one of our heroines from our book Jewish Luck, remembers poignantly the Passover seder - a tradition her family observed without remembering what words to read.
Writing the memoirs of Vera and Alisa was a privilege. Meryll and I were facilitators and observers to two women who agreed to reveal themselves honestly and openly. Many of the funniest stories began with terror, but were re-encoded and reframed through the telling. Other stories began as sorrowful and fragmented events such as Vera and Alisa’s years of silence from one another. As we described in the first scene of Jewish Luck, Vera and Alisa moving closer to one another at the Cayman Island airport into an embrace, we could observe the same coming to wholeness as they listened to each other tell their accounts of that period to one another, developing deeper empathy and connection.
We, as writers and sisters, had a parallel process of moving from rigid to more fluid roles. Sisters have their own dynamics. For years, my sister was typecast for me as the brilliant one with me being the jester. Meryll did not promote this. It was simply the role I assumed. Three and a half years of co-writing and collaboration dissolved those antiquated boundaries and nourished a connection that is rich and complex. Our own personal histories became more integrated as we exchanged our points of view growing up while writing the chapters on Vera and Alisa at the same ages.
Reading about memory and trauma helps me understand the connections in the work that I do as a psychologist, consultant and writer. Growth is always toward integration --of biological systems and of relationships.
Daniel Siegel defines emotion as a shift in integration. Joy is experienced, according to Siegel, when we experience greater integration. Sadness, confusion, disappointment, or anger is felt as we shift to a state of less integration. Try this concept out as you notice your own emotions and those of others. I feel very joyful that I’ve had this journey. Turning the ironic phrase, “Jewish luck” on its head, perhaps it is Jewish luck that we come from a tradition woven with rituals that forge resilience and historical memory.
Siegel, Daniel J., Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology. NY: Norton, 2012
*This blog was first published as "Memory and Memoir" on April 6, 2014. It has been revised.